


Parasomnia

by Laura Kaye (laurakaye)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Medical Procedures, Memory Alteration, Phil Coulson's canonical horrific resurrection trauma, Resurrection, Tahiti is a Magical Place, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6308236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment—just a moment—Phil thinks, <i>wow, I pulled through after all.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Parasomnia

**Author's Note:**

> This is a TAHITI story, along with everything that implies. 
> 
> Many thanks to Kathar for beta, and for the head canon that sparked this story in the first place.

He wakes up.

There’s a monitor somewhere, beeping, and when he moves his hand he can feel the tug of an IV. He blinks open crusted eyes, and sees what he expected: a thin blanket, a hospital bed. 

Nick is standing nearby, and when he sees Phil looking, he smiles. “Welcome back,” he says, his eye crinkling: genuine, relieved.

For a moment—just a moment—Phil thinks, _wow, I pulled through after all._ But then the door opens and Dr. Streiten comes through and the fear grips his heart in an icy fist. His body feels good, he realizes. Too good. 

“Nick?” he whispers. “Where are we?”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Nick says, his smile turning brittle at the edges, and Phil knows the truth from the way Streiten turns to the Director, uneasy. The doctor’s never been that good at lying, and he’s only ever been assigned to one project that can’t be spoken aloud.

_TAHITI._  

“What did you do?” his voice tears out of him, creaky and breaking. “What the _fuck_ did you _do to me?”_ He knows. He knows, but he can’t believe it. Nick promised him they’d shut the project down. He _promised_.

“I’m sorry, Phil,” Nick says. “I had no other choice.”

“We’ve been working on the procedure,” Dr. Streiten says. “We think we may have fixed the… issues, that we had before.”

He lasts almost two weeks before he starts carving.

—

He wakes up.

“Good to see you feeling better,” the doctor tells him. “You’ve suffered a head injury; the time around the incident may be hazy in your memory, but you’re going to be just fine.”

“Sorry,” Phil says, “do I know you?” 

The doctor smiles, a little stiff. “No, Agent, we’ve never met,” he says, but something in his eyes makes Phil think he’s lying.

—

They’d thought that if Phil didn’t remember dying, he wouldn’t realize he’d been resurrected, and the side effects would never materialize. It had worked really well for all of a week, and then they’d given him an intelligence briefing about the Chitauri invasion. He’d recovered the memories in a day. 

The carving had taken a little longer.

“We can do what we did for the others,” Dr. Streiten tells him. “Wipe the memories out, give you new ones. A new life, somewhere quiet.”

Phil thinks of it, a quiet life. Somewhere out of the way. He remembers the packages they’d made for the other agents; they’d make him an accountant, maybe, or a project manager. Transferred in from out of town. A quiet, unassuming man in a suit, no family or friends. Maybe he’d meet someone, out in the middle of Kansas or Kentucky or Ohio. Maybe he’d be happy.

He’s wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to look back on his life and see nothing to regret. Every agent has something—red in the ledger, Natasha calls it. The times you got there too late, the plans you couldn’t stop, the people you couldn’t save. Phil isn’t one to live in the past—he’s always been more of a “move on, do better” person—but he’s got his share of memories that turn up every so often on a bad night.

He’d always made sure the cover packages were… pleasant. Gentle, happy lives. He’d thought of it as giving the agents some well-earned peace—wasn’t that what an afterlife was for? Sometimes he’d even been a little jealous.

He could have that, now. They’d probably even let him work on the memory package; he could give himself some hobbies, pick out somewhere nice to live, a job he’d enjoy. 

He thinks of it.

He thinks of never again knowing the vicious thrill of combat, the swell of pride from saving someone. He thinks of going to work in an office, of never knowing that his work, his life, has made a difference. 

He thinks of the secrets he keeps. Some of them, he’s the last person alive who knows. He thinks of his parents’ grave, nobody to tend it, growing overgrown and ragged. Forgotten.

He thinks of losing everything he values, everyone he knows: SHIELD, Nick, his collections, his car, Jasper and Maria, Melinda, Natasha. 

Clint.

He thinks of not knowing he once got to meet Captain America. He thinks of not caring.

“What’s the other option?” he asks.

—

He wakes up.

He’s in five-point restraints this time; Nick is sitting by the gurney. 

“Oh God,” Phil whispers. “Nick—Nick, did I—”

“The doctor’s going to be fine,” Nick says. “This one’s on us: we should have known you’re too good an agent not to pick up something was off.”

“You should let me go,” Phil says, shutting his eyes. “This is insane, we can’t keep doing this. The procedure was never meant to be used more than once! People aren’t like, like videotapes, you can’t just keep erasing them and trying again!” He’s shaking, bile rising in the back of his throat. “We never should have—you never should have let—”

“But I did,” Nick cuts him off, “and here we are, and I’m not letting you go that easy.” 

“You promised you would shut it down,” he says, and hot tears scald his cheeks. “You promised me.”

“You know I couldn’t do that,” Fury says. “Not when there was the slightest chance that it would work.”

“It _doesn’t_ work! Look at me, Nick!” He opens his eyes at last. Nick is nearby, but he’s not within arm’s reach. “How many times am I going to w-wake up here? How many more tries before it just burns out my brain? This isn’t a life, this—this is a horror movie.” His breathing is speeding up, his heart racing. There’s a monitor beeping near his head. In the restraint, his hand is twitching for a knife. Nick’s standing up, he’s calling for someone, there are people moving, and something cold that burns creeps under his skin and—

—

He wakes up. 

“Agent Coulson, you’re in Medical,” someone says. “You came through the surgery just fine.”

His chest hurts. Of course it hurts, he got stabbed, right? He got stabbed. He got stabbed and he’s on the good drugs.

“Yeah, you are really high right now,” Nick tells him. 

“Checked out,” he manages to say.

“Yeah, and like I told you: not an option, Coulson.”

“Barton?” he asks, breath wheezing in his throat, and a strange look crosses Nick’s face.

“Recovered,” he says, and Phil sags with relief. Before he can gather himself enough to ask about Natasha, Nick makes a quelling gesture.

“They’re all fine,” he says. “They pulled through, all of them. Pulled together.”

“Knew… it,” Phil says, and he doesn’t have much energy but he thinks he has enough to be a tiny bit smug.

“Yeah,” Nick says. “You were right. Now go back to sleep, Phil, let me take care of things.”

He lets himself fall deeper into the pillows. It’s all right. Clint’s all right, they got him back, and he’s a superhero now. Phil always knew he would be. The sleep that overtakes him is deep and sweet.

The memories start breaking through before he’s even done with his fake rehab. He’s carving again less than a week later.

“You should have left me dead,” he tells Nick. His hands are scratched and cut. They tried to keep him away from knives at first; Nick made them give him one when he started trying to use his fingernails. The blade is too short to kill someone with, which is a small mercy. “I thought I could do this, but I was wrong. This is _wrong.”_ The urge is rising, pushing at him, an itch on his brain. When the blade pierces the tabletop, the relief is almost sexual. It’s disgusting. He disgusts himself.

“We need you, Phil.”

He scoffs, not looking up from the pattern forming at the tip of the knife. “I’m not the man you need anymore.” The table is pitted with carvings but he can always find a clean spot. As long as he lets himself carve, he can focus enough for a conversation. “You’ve got plenty of agents where I came from, sir. Most of them aren’t even crazy.”

“They aren’t you.” Nick pulls a device out of his coat and flips a switch. Even here, in the deepest level of the deepest secret of SHIELD, he’s worried about surveillance. He leans forward, his face tight with worry. Phil’s never seen him look like this before. 

He talks, and talks, and breaks Phil’s heart.

SHIELD is rotten. SHIELD is overcome. There’s an evil worked its way in, deep into the core, throughout every level, and there are precious few people Nick knows are free from the taint.

“You and Maria are the only agents over an eight that I’m sure of,” Nick finishes. “I think I have the Avengers clear, but I need help on the inside. I need people I can trust. I _need_ you, Phil.”

Phil thinks of it, all the power and influence of SHIELD twisted, all that technology, all those people, extraordinary people who trust the system. He’s always been proud to be a shield for the innocent. How many times has he unknowingly betrayed his oath?

He remembers quiet conversations, he and Clint and Natasha in a safehouse, talking about balancing their ledgers, doing good in the world. Phil had promised them they could be heroes at SHIELD, make things right. He had promised them.

Everything is silent but the scrape of Phil’s knife.

He draws a shaky breath.

“I think you’re going to have to take more,” he tells Nick—no, this is _Fury_ , this is Director Fury—and he sees his shoulders relax beneath his coat.

—

“You’re going to have to t-take it all, next time,” he tells Dr. Streiten. His speech is getting worse, but his mind is mostly clear, for now. “Everything about the p-project, and all the time since I di—since I g-got here.” He pushes the file across the table. He can feel the urge to carve rising, but he can hold off for a little while longer. His fingers twitch, and he touches the knife in his pocket like a totem. “I’ve m-made a list of dates.”

Streiten flips through, reading. Months of sporadic visits, a week here, three days there, secret trips tacked on to other missions, fit in under the guise of leave. The empty spaces will spread throughout years, by the end. 

“You know I can’t take these all at once.” 

“I kn-know.”

“I’ll have to work backwards. It’ll be a series—we’ll be racing against the degradation, we won’t be able to give you time to recover.” The doctor’s voice breaks. “I don’t know if I—Phil, you’re asking me to torture you for _weeks.”_

He smiles, but there’s not much humor in it. “Guess it’s a g-good thing I won’t r-remember, then, isn’t it?”

—

He wakes up screaming.

—

He wakes up screaming.

—

He wakes up screaming.

—

He wakes up—

—

He wakes up.

“Seriously, Phil, sleeping on the plane?” Maria says, grinning at him from across the aisle. “You’ve been out on leave too long.”

He laughs, stretching in his seat. “Yeah, I was starting to get a little restless. Nice problem to have, though.”

“Wish I’d gotten that kind of rehab the last time I got shot,” she says, a little wistful. “There’s a lot worse places to spend your short-term disability than Tahiti.”

He smiles, remembering the shush of the waves, the cries of seabirds, the warmth of the sun. “It’s a magical place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_Epilogue_ **

 

He wakes up.

He’s panting, breath sawing in and out of his hoarse throat like he’s been screaming in his sleep again. His hair is wet through with sweat, and he shivers as the air conditioning kicks on, sending a cold draft across his skin. His eyes dart around desperately, trying to get his bearings, looking for the doctor, looking for—

“Hey,” a soft, sleepy voice says from beside him. “Phil, hey, are you okay?” 

There’s a click, and the bedside lamp comes on, dim enough not to hurt their eyes but bright enough that he can see Clint propped up on one elbow beside him, looking down at him with concern writ clear across his expression. 

“Oh, babe, I’m so sorry,” Clint says, face crinkling with distress. “Dammit, I knew I should have left my aids in tonight, I didn’t even wake up until you started struggling.” He reaches out a hand, then stops. “Sorry, is it okay if I touch you?”

Phil nods, squeezing his burning eyes closed as Clint gathers him in and tucks him against his broad chest, those beautiful arms folding around him strong and sure.

“The same one?” Clint asks. “TAHITI?”

Phil nods, gulping down the bitterness in his throat at the sound of Clint’s voice saying that word. He still feels panicky about it sometimes, like somehow the original intent of the program is still around, like someday Clint might be the one in the Guest House, waking and waking—

“Shhh,” Clint says, his voice a little over-loud, his lips moving against Phil’s forehead. “It’s over, Phil, you’re here with me now. It’s never going to happen again, baby, you stopped it, I promise.” Clint strokes the pebbled skin of Phil’s back with his warm hands and kisses Phil’s wet hair. Phil shakes and shakes in his arms, until he’s finally wrung out and calm again, until he can start to drift away to the feel and the sound of Clint there for him, protecting him, loving him.

He sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SO SORRY! I DIDN'T DO THIS TO HIM, THE SHOW DID! *sobs*
> 
> This story originally ended on "It's a magical place," but then an hour later I had to go back and add the epilogue because I just COULD NOT LEAVE IT THERE.


End file.
